Monday, October 6, 2008

A Sour State of Affairs

Well, tonight was night #1 of trying to do something with ALL of the apples I ordered...all 80 lbs of apples (clearly I had no concept of what 40 lbs (1 box) could do), well, after 5 pies and 24 apple tarts, I am calling it quits for tonight (sadly with only a small dent made in my apple pile)...and dreading tomorrow...my first attempt at canning solo--yikes!!!...Jewel, Tan and Heather, are you guys sure you don't want to come up a little earlier????Well, anyway, a very curious situation that I was unaware of came to my attention tonight...Do you know that we are currently in the midst of a WORLDWIDE LEMON JUICE SHORTAGE!!!! Can you even believe it?!?...in preparation for my big apple bake, I went shopping tonight and visited 4 (yes 4) different stores only to find not one drop of concentrate lemon juice....Why though is the Lime juice still able to make it to the shelves? Who's using all the Lemon juice?....perhaps because there is an actual shortage of the lemon itself, I thought...but then why are you still able to find the real Lemon fruit itself still?...Well, if you were unaware of this situation...Here is what I managed to plagiarize from a recent Calgary Herald article I found online....

Freezing weather in California and Argentina in 2007 destroyed fruit and created shortages; drought conditions in Spain and Australia have also hurt crops."Basically all the folks who would be producing a lot of lemons had very short crops," she says."And when there's a shortage, a lot of the crop goes to the fresh market, because the fresh market generally fetches a higher price than a processing (juice) market."While McKinnon says the problem will likely start to let up in September, Smith believes we will still see shortages in the market in mid-2009, until this year's crop is juiced, packaged and on store shelves across North America.Until then? Look for fresh lemons if you don't have any concentrate, Smith says."You'll really be impressed with the taste."Goodnight.

Liam -- All I can say is you are lucky you don't live closer...otherwise you probably would have had me raiding your fridge at 10:00 at night...anyway, enjoy every precious drop of your rare lemon juice.